


The Heteronormies

by DoubtingRabbit



Category: Extreme Ghostbusters (Cartoon)
Genre: 1990s, Canon Character of Color, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Queer Character, Episode Style, Gen, Heternormativity, Incapacitation by drugging, M/M, Queer Themes, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, awkward conversations about sex, compulsory heterosexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-04-14 17:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14141244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubtingRabbit/pseuds/DoubtingRabbit
Summary: It was pretty hard to be queer in 1997. Almost as hard as busting ghosts. (to be updated weekly until finished)





	1. GHOSTBUSTERS DRINK FREE

**Author's Note:**

> Just kidding, they're all too young to drink.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just kidding they're too young to drink.

The night had been kind of fun, to start off. A call in the late afternoon split the group down the middle, and Garrett snapped up the chance to check out the Pallas Club with Eduardo, leaving Kylie and Roland to head down to boring old Chelsea.

His nose for fame and fortune had turned out right, and after a good ghostbusting of an all-too-easy Class 2 in the back rooms before the night even got started had found him and Eduardo ushered, past the long and winding lines the hoi polloi had to cope with just to get into New York City's current hottest nightclub and dance the night away with New York City's hottest people. Just where Garrett knew he had always belonged.

Too bad that, once they got in past the bouncers and the coat room, every area of the dance floor in the creatively designed club was lifted up onto multilevel stages with narrow, spiral staircases built that seemed specifically built to block the passage of any wheelchair. Even the short staircase into the main room was split by a railing. The club owner didn't even seem to have the good sense to be ashamed of himself when he laughed off Garrett's complaint about being stuck in the half circle near the front door. He even seemed amused at the idea of a wheelchair user dancing, as if Garrett had told him some fantastic joke.

And as he was in no rush to move through the club on his hands around a room filled with 4-inch heels without his chair and losing a finger in the process, Garrett settled into scowling at the patrons as they entered the club and attempted to ignore him. Maybe not the best move to attract the Bold and the Beautiful, but hell! It suited his mood.

"C'mon, man, cheer up!" Eduardo appeared out of nowhere to interrupt his moping with a laugh so easy that Garrett could punch him. "Just getting into this place is a big deal, right? That's what you were saying all the way here!"

Leave it to Eduardo to not be able to get it. That jerkwad hadn't even said goodbye! He'd just disappeared, climbed up to the fourth platform in his proton pack and uniform, had a whole bunch of ladies grinding on him for the past half hour--and if that hadn't made envy (jealousy?) eat him alive then nothing would--until he was sweaty... and then he dared to come back down and bring him a Pepsi!? 

Garrett hated Pepsi. Well, more specifically, he hated being brought a pity Pepsi by Eduardo, who was definitely enjoying his night more than Garrett was. And so he really hated this particular Pepsi.

"Thanks," he grumbled and let the heavy beat of the music swallow up his non-gratitude.

"You're welcome, man," Eduardo said, refusing to take a hint and instead elbowed him before slumping back against the railing around them. Then he looked behind him at the crowd bouncing to the beat, and Garrett could see the dawning realization on his face as he suddenly got why it was that he was still stuck near the front.

He began to grin, then punched his shoulder and asked, "Hey, Garrett, you wanna dance?"

-

On the one hand, the journey across a dance floor full of stiletto heels was easier when done with two. Between Eddie's shoulder and the waist-high neon railing that ran the surface perimeter of the nightclub, it was simple enough to make their way to a dancer's platform with a half dozen rungs running up the side.

On the other hand, getting the Beautiful People who danced atop it to give up the space for a clearly superior dancer was another thing altogether. After Eduardo had threatened ghosts to no avail, Garrett explained what it was that powered the proton packs, and then hinted at the mutating effects of nuclear power. It only took hitting the reboot button and watching the lights flash before they scrambled down and he and Eddie had the platform all to themselves.

And on a third, possibly disembodied hand, seeing the look on the club owner's face as his sick sharp moves inside a 5x5 foot octagon, and around a very enthusiastic Eduardo, made the crowd holler like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise both were up there cuttin' the rug--er, putting down rubber skids? Well, that made any insult taken from him all better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already have a couple chapters written and a few more planned from there, but, much like Tinkerbell, I require exuberant praise to continue...


	2. MEANWHILE, IN CHELSEA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roland and Kylie have their own encounter with the supernatural on the same night.

"There is a reading here," Kylie said as the P.K.E. meter percolating over the set of rings the elderly gentleman had called them over to see his rowhouse in Chelsea to check out. "It's not a very strong one, but there's definitely some activity."

"The rest of the house is clean, so you were right about the place being pretty boring, Mr. McBride," Roland added as he entered the drawing room and joined Kylie in analyzing the rings. He'd have to tell her about it even being below baseline later. Must be nice living in a place that practically repelled ghosts.

"Oh, that is a relief!" The sharply dressed man leaned forward in his recliner and pushed the velvet. "And it follows that I never had a problem until Great Aunt Hortencia passed, God rest her, and willed me her wedding ring. I don't know what I'd do if I had to live in a haunted house."

"What was it you saw, again?" Kylie asked, picking up the engagement ring of the pair, a thin, beautiful platinum band laid with pink little gems that had to be diamonds.

"Well…" Mr. McBride hesitated.

Roland was already appraising the men's wedding band like he knew a thing or two about jewelry. Kylie felt an urge to slip it on her hand.

"It wasn't so much of what I saw, as it was what I heard."

She saw Roland's left ring finger twitch as he stroked the thick band of the platinum ring, eyes never leaving it. She felt the pull of the ring quickly became impossible to resist.

"Wh-what did you hear?" Kylie heard herself ask the question distantly, as if from across the street. She felt cool metal slide down her ring finger and her sight began to dim.

"Oddly enough, my dear, it was wedding bells..."


	3. WHOLE KIT AND CANOODLE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rings have taken effect, and now it's the whole team's problem.

"Oh, my _God!_ I'm gonna be _sick!_ "

Eduardo's faked heaving filled even the ample space of the firehouse lounge late the next morning.

"I understand the sentiment," Egon said. There was a perturbed look on his usually flat expression when he glanced at what it was that drove Eduardo to dramatics. Or maybe it was Eduardo's dramatics he was referring to, and not the pair of his pupils making gooey eyes at one another. Either way, it did not seem to deter him from digging through the books they had spread out before them.

"I still don't get how this happened," Garrett said as he sorted through various online libraries of ancient tomes and volumes all in a desperate act to keep from looking over. He didn't have to, after all, Roland and Kylie were as loud as Eduardo's constant show of disgust.

"Oh, no no no! I love _you_ more, snuggle muffin!" Kylie cooed into her hands clasped beneath her chin.

"Absolutely impossible, my li'l gothic beauty, because I love _you_ more!" Roland replied through pursed lips. Then they leaned together to rub noses. The look of disgust that spread over the other three's faces was identical.

"So, what's it?" Eduardo asked, hoping desperately to distract from the awkward scene that Roland and Kylie made. "Some ancient fertility cult's evil god?"

"The spirit of a spurned lover? Because we've handled those before."

"Cupid gone crazy?"

The young men might have wound on forever into more and more implausible (and uneducated guesses), but Egon stopped them with a clearing of his throat and held up an old green book that had sat in a nest of rejected microfiche.

"Oh, no. It's much, much worse. This is the work of a coven of late-1970's counter- counter-culture witches trying to spread the Perfect Heterosexual Nuclear Family through a mixture of ancient, pre-Roman Carthaginian marriage rituals, the invocation of middle-class members of medieval Teutonic diabolism, and 9th century Greek-Christian homebrew mysticism, all under the guidance of an organization run by a wealthy land developer whose political loyalty lay with a Reaganite coalition called the Advancement for Traditional American Core Values of the Christian Family and Nation."

"What?" both Garrett and Eduardo asked in unison.

"Republicans."

"Egon ... that sounds pretty boring, man."

"Yes, well," Egon said, unperturbed by the label. "Be that as it may, I have found sightings and incidences enough to confirm that 17 pairs of these rings were created in the year 1981 for the specific purposes of seeding pawn shops with them and inspiring an unsettling and yet unwavering devotion to their spouse, families, place of work, a mainstream Christian god, and a set of conservative values concurrent with the current trend."

"I would have to disagree," Roland said, shocking the three unaffected ghostbusters into staring at him. "It's not unsettling at all to stand up for the concepts of Life, Liberty and the American Dream!"

Kylie nodded in agreement, patted Roland's hands as they folded over hers. "He's got a point. He's so smart and true, this man of mine."

"Since when has Roland been anyone's man?" Eduardo asked, leaning back so far in his chair that he looked like he might fall.

"Well, sometimes, it takes a little push to see what's right in front of you," Kylie said

"That your soulmate has been right in front of you all along." Roland sighed.

"Oh, _sweetheart!_ "

"Oh, gag me," Garrett groused. He pushed back from the table and cracked his knuckles. "The two of you are really laying it on a little thick, aren't you?"

"They're possessed," Egon said, as if they needed the reminder.

"We are not!" Roland insisted. Kylie scooted her chair closer.

"What's up with this, though?" Eduardo said, leveling a finger at them and having to pinwheel his arms a moment before righting himself again with all four legs of the chair on the floor. " You were never interested in each other before."

"Yeah!" Garrett joined in, attempting to talk a little sense into the senseless. "How's it you're soulmates, but you only realized it after you put on those creep-o rings, huh?"

Momentarily, the happy couple seemed a little unsettled. They glanced at each other, unsure.

"Well…"

Garrett laughed, shook his head. "See? You don't have anything."

"We have each other!" Kylie said, but her enthusiasm was weak and Garrett seemed pleased at having pinned down this spell's weakness.

"You've got those rings, is what you've got." Garrett pointed at their hands, causing the other two to look down, even more uncertain. Eduardo chuckled. Then, their faces both twisted up into twin looks of determination so eerily similar that they looked as if they'd planned it.

Egon cautioned the two as-of-yet-un-possessed members of the team with a stern, "-- _boys_." but neither Eduardo nor Garrett listened, they were too far into the banter to notice they were doing their teammates far more harm than good.

" **_Enough!_ ** " Kylie shouted, eyes blazing as she slapped her hands palm down on the table, quieting the whole room with shock.

"We'll prove it!" Roland joined her, standing up and showing that same rigid determination infecting his usually gentle features.

"The clerk's office is still open," Kylie said with a growing excitement. "I bet we could make it before they close for the day--"  
  
"And get a marriage license!" Roland finished her sentence and they pulled close again to nuzzle noses.

"Hold on," Egon said, pushing away from the table. "I am stepping in. Putting my foot down. This is clearly a part of the control the rings have on you." But they ignored him.

"If we bring the yellow pages, I can look up an officiant on the way there! We'll be married before the night is over."

"Oh, princess," Roland mooned. "You're so clever. I'll go get the keys!"

" _Princess?_ " mouthed Eduardo. Garrett shrugged, and Egon looked lost.

"Already?!" Janine interrupted, grabbing everyone's attention by having appeared among them, snacking on a packet of chocolate-covered pretzels that she'd somehow managed to keep safe from every resident chowhound. "What, no long engagement? No bridal shower? No bridesmaid luncheon, or time to plan bachelor and bachelorette parties! Well, I guess no bridesmaids at all, if it's right away. So, there won't be a church ceremony, either, huh? And definitely not a reception, because who could book a DJ at this hour!"

With each item she listed, the pair seemed to become confused, distraught.

"No church wedding," Kylie echoed, mournful.

"No DJ… Well. I would want a band." Roland said, already being distracted by the thought of designing the most pure wedding possible.

There was an intake of breath as Egon started to speak, but Janine shushed the three men with a severe glare. She then took both of the affected 'busters by the shoulders and mother hen'd them into an embrace, shuffling them off towards the pen of her office desk and advising them, "Don't listen to these party poopers! They don't know what they're talking about. Love is beautiful, kids. How about we go do some planning for your Big Day? C'mon!"

And she left the remaining three to puzzle their way to a solution while she dealt with their immediate mess.


	4. SEXOLOGY 101 WITH DOCTOR EGON SPENGLER, PhD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eduardo is in need of some guidance on the topic of romance and attraction and, unfortunately, chooses Egon to go to for help.

It seemed that removing the rings had no effect on the wearer once the spell had taken hold, and once Janine had convinced both Roland and Kylie to remove their rings--just for a day or two! for cleaning! for the wedding!--Egon had squirreled them away to his laboratory and set to studying them for rare earth metals, astrological or meteorological elements... or human remains.

This left little for Eduardo to accomplish in the meanwhile, as he'd never been very good at spotting junk under the microscope, and the mention of 'remains' had put him off touching the rings. Instead, he brewed for a good half hour until he'd planned out what had been on his mind since the night before in the dance club. And after.

"So, I have this friend," Eduardo said, hedging his bets. He was very lucky that Egon was working with a very interesting new piece of supernatural-ness, and not easily drawn away from his focus. Taking his boss/professor's "uh-huh" as license to continue, he said, "And he was, like, wondering if you could, um… quantify attraction? Like, scientifically?"

"An interesting topic, sexology!" Egon said, just as Eduardo realized that hearing Dr. Egon Spengler saying any version of the word 'sex' was possibly the most mortifying thing he had experienced in his young life. There was surely some sign in the way Eduardo's entire body suddenly felt crammed awkwardly into shape, but nonetheless Egon pursued the topic. "There are the ancient classics, of course, on wooing and keeping a partner, from the Ancient Roman poet Ovid's  _ Ars Amatoria  _ and the earlier, and much more infamous,  _ Kama Sutra _ by the Hindu philosopher Vātsyāyana in 600 BCE."

"Ancient Rome and ancient-er Hindu aren't exactly going to help me. Er, I mean him."

Egon seemed unmoved by his Freudian slip and only said, "Hindu is an ethno-geographical term."

"Right. But can you, like, give me something a little more modern, maybe?"

"Hmm. Well, there is  _ The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight _ ."

"That sounds a bit flowery, but it's--"

"It's a fifteenth-century erotic guide to sexual behavior by the noted poet, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Nafzawi."

"You got anything from this century?"

"There's the seminal work of Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Report."

"Was he a poet?"

"A biologist."

"Okay, fine. We'll go with him. What advice has he got to give to my friend."

"I'm really more familiar with Kinsey's work with gall wasps. The oak-parasitic species produce two generations a year: one is a two-sex mating pair, and the second is a generation capable of parthenogenesis. No male involved."

Eduardo gave a sigh and stood up, made for the door. "Good talk, man. Thanks."


	5. MOST AWKWARD MOMENTS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to keep everything relatively canon so, true to form, Eddie can't catch a break.

"Well! That was a bust," Eduardo said as he entered into the secretary's pen with a practiced feel to the words.

Truth be told, he was expecting Janine to prod him for more information so that he could get what was weighing on him off of his chest. In the time it had taken him to leave Egon's lab and join the rest of the un-effected 'busters out front he had already sorted the scenario out in his head:

He had imagined himself sitting on her desk while she pulled what he had to say out of him. Maybe she'd get up and come around, or more likely she'd reach across her desk to pat his knee while the tension in the air that would dissolve.

Then he could open up and confess to what had happened the last night, drop all the machismo he put on in the group, and talk about it; ease into how, the night before, he and Garrett had knocked out the ghost in a way that barely needed verbal communication.

About how the two of them had taken to the dance floor and wowed the whole room, but that Eduardo didn't notice a single thing, cheer or jeer, as long as he was watching Garrett dance.

And he could tell, just _ tell _ , that they were both thinking the same thing all night. That neither one of them was doing anything at all but trying to impress the other one. Even the eye contact between them was electric.

When they'd left the club at almost 2 AM, all laughing and worn and they couldn't stop touching each other, they'd gotten a cab, and then, in the backseat, for just a second--

"What was a bust?" Garrett asked, shattering his fantasy and making Eduardo come to the realization that Janine wasn't there at all, and that the same guy he didn't exactly want to be caught alone in a room with just yet was the one he was… well, exactly that.

"Oh. Um, nothing. Gonna, uh, go back in there and see if Egon needs any help… uh, still."

"You go do that."


	6. ASKING FOR ME, NOT A FRIEND

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Janine is a bit sick of all the assumptions being thrown around by these kids.

The lovebirds were absorbed so deeply with the collection of bridal magazines that Janine had bought for the two of them from the corner newsstand that Garrett found it easy to have a conversation about them in plain hearing of the two.

"So, they're really something, huh?" he asked with a jerk of his head towards Kylie and Roland making a loud scene over cake frosting types or something.

"Mmm," Janine replied as she flipped through the celebrity magazine she'd gotten for herself, clearly happy with her current level of involvement in the conversation.

Garrett pressed on through her boredom, saying, "It's just that I never figured the two of them would be together, even if it is a spell. You know? They just never seemed to be each others' type."

"Oh, yeah. Attraction's a funny thing," she replied with her voice flat as her eyes never left the slick pages open in front of her.

"About that," Garrett said, clearing his throat before continuing, "I had a question."

She looked up at him. "Make it snappy. I already saved your butts earlier, and that's my good deed for the week."

"Well, you know, how can you be sure that the attraction is, um, real?"

"Hmm?"

"Well, how do you know it's not just you that's attracted to them, and that it's not just a dumb spell, or, like, you're hoping too hard and reading them wrong, or--?" There was danger in her eyes, so he tried to clarify. "What's it like being attracted to someone who's not attracted back?"

Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose a smidge. "... one more chance, Garrett. Just one."   
  
"Okay, okay, okay, uh! Well, just that, I see you and Egon..."

" **_Excuse_ ** you!" Janine interrupted him, putting down her magazine without earmarking her place just to show she meant business. He swallowed at the lump of fear in his throat that few ghosts he'd fought had ever evoked when she stood up to loom over her desk.

"Let me put this to you in terms that Neanderthals and college students can easily understand: my relationship with Egon's none of your business. But since you so politely asked, Garrett, what he and I have is special. No, it's transcendent, is what it is, unlike anything I'd ever imagined with any other guy, and-" 

She paused, noticed the cynical quirk to Garrett's eyebrow. "And yes, it's fine. Well. 'Fine' may be a little optimistic."

Janine settled back into her chair and picked up her magazine again. She flipped back to her article, sighed and added a final, "But, honestly, Garrett? I don't think that's going to be your problem with Eduardo." S he didn't even have to look up to know that she'd gotten the blushing reaction she knew that she would, and even ignored his bluster about having to "go check on the sweethearts" in favor of a smug smile.


	7. WISHING AND HOPING AND PLOTTING AND SCHEMING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole gang winds down for the evening, and Egon settles in with a good Satanic Panic book, with Kylie and Roland on quarantine.

Twenty-four hours passed and a dozen tests performed on the subjects, but no particular agreement on an angle to approach it decided upon. When Eddie complained that they would have gotten a lot further if Kylie and her book smarts had been around to lend a hand, Egon hadn't disagreed. In fact, he ordered both him and Garrett back home again.

Which they were happy to do since it was getting boring around there.

Kylie and Roland, on the other hand, were on lockdown as far as Dr. Spengler was concerned. He put the third floor in quarantine and assigned them each their own corners, as they clearly could not be left to their own devices while under the influence, with the fervor of the delusions the rings inflicted they couldn't be trusted not to elope.

He contacted the Jacksons and found they were quite all right with him doing a little extra credit for a course which required a nighttime shift for star monitoring. Kylie, having her own apartment, was an even easier task, as there were no concerned parents to contact if she didn't show up on time.

It took more convincing to get the two newly conservative-minded young people sleep in the same building, but he could thank Janine for her final intervention into the situation before leaving for the evening later… when she wasn't full of acidic responses about how 'overtime gets double time pay' and in a rush to get out the door. Then she was gone and Egon could focus on some of his more related writings in occultism as through the view of the Grand Old Party.

Despite the subject not being his bailiwick, he had looked forward to wrapping himself up in references to famous sermons and old VHS Satanic Panic training guides. And though he would never profess it in those exact words, he knew he loved this cloistered world of academia just as much as he had loved the fieldwork of ghostbusting. Making connections between texts, from the doctors N. Deborah and M.A. Snedeker and their treatises on Satanic Panic, to Warren and Warren-Milney's pamphleted rundowns on more current topics in demonology, was equally as exciting as fighting any poltergeist or Class 3.

Egon was so absorbed that he didn't seem to notice the calm that had fallen over the entire firehouse.

Maybe it was because he was just used to the quietude of working alone, but it didn't seem at all unusual to him when the two ring-effected kids started speaking in hushed tones together. Then going all-together silent and slinking around the main room and his lab.

Maybe he should have.

"Egon? What's… 'cetirizine hydrochloride'?" Kylie asked, distantly, reading off of a box and halfway inside of a medicine cabinet.

"An allergy medication," he responded without looking up from his book. "For plasma-induced anaphylactic shock."

The dreamy, almost dismissive quality to her professor's voice seemed to confirm something and she nodded, waving Roland over to the cabinet. They each pocketed a box of the hydrochloride. Roland turned a few boxes around by hand, picked up one, squinted.

"And then what's… uh, 'bivalirudin' do?" he asked, looking furtively at him around the door of the cabinet.

"It's an anticoagulant. I've mostly used it to staunch phantom blood."

Kylie shook her head. Roland replaced the box and took another.

"Isoflurane?" she asked.  
  
"An inhalable anesthetic."

A slight shuffle, some quick and hushed words, and no reaction from Egon. So she continued. "And… sodium thiopental?"

"A rapid-acting barbiturate anesthetic."

"How did you get these?"

"How did I get an unlicensed nuclear device into New York City limits? The patent expired."

"Hey, Egon? Where's that copy of UCL Hospitals Injectable Drug Administration Guide?"

"Top shelf on the wall behind the centrifuges."

"Thank you."  
  
"You're welcome."

Then, blessed quiet again, and Egon could give his full attention back to the text explaining the _Virtues of Marriage in Combating Demon Possession_ and glean perhaps a few clues as to the deeper mechanism of the current--"Why did you need to know all of that?"

"No reason," was the reply he heard as he felt the needle slide into his skin.

-

Pajamas on, hair up in her nightly curlers, and something trashy on T.V., Janine hadn't exactly been expecting a phone call, but she'd take one if she got it! Obeying the ringing of the bell, she flung herself across her couch to answer it.

"Hello, Melnitz residence."

"Janine?! Oh, thank God, you're still awake!" Kylie panted at the end of the line, panic threading through every word of the sentence.

"Kylie? What's wrong?" Janine pressed the phone pressed hard to her ear, as if she could hear it better that way.

"It's Egon! He broke the rings, but he-- I don't know, Janine! There was this big blue explosion, and then he passed out and all the electricity went out around the headquarters and, well, Roland and I didn't know what to do, so we came all the way here and--"

"Wait, came out where?"

"Look out your window at the street."

Janine jerked back from the phone as though it might have bit her, stared suspiciously, and then crossed to her window. Peeking through the blinds, she only scanned a moment before she saw them. Roland hunched to hold up Egon who seemed to be completely passed out, and Kylie at the payphone attached to the corner store across the way.

"God," she breathed into her phone, Kylie's panic began to catch. "Well, bring him up, I guess!"

"Actually, can you come down here?"

I--" She was going to argue. To put her foot down, she was in her pajamas, no way, but then Kylie added a 'please' and she sighed. "Fine. Let me put on my overcoat."

Janine made it halfway across the empty street before she realized that real reason that Roland was hunched over was that he was holding an oxygen tank in his other arm, and a mask to Egon's face.

"Oh, my God, what happened? Is he okay!?" she burst into a sprint.

"He's fine, just fine," Roland assured her.

Kylie held out her hand, begging for comfort. Janine took it. She started to ask, "Did he get knocked out from the blast, or is he--" but didn't get much further when she felt a warm loop of metal slide up the length of her finger.

"There... wasn't a blast, was there?"

Janine felt it throb on her hand, and it almost felt right, so she let it pull her hand towards Egon's, where its mate waited for it.

Kylie practically squealing "You're going to be _so_ happy!" was the last thing she heard before her fingers twined with Egon's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Missed last week's deadline due to illness, but I'm making it up this week by posting an "extra long" chapter. Thanks for sticking with me, we've only got about two, three more chapters to go.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping I can wind out this story over the length of the average episode


End file.
